Caring for others while learning to care for yourself.
Do you often experience like your emotional, mental, and physical cup is always running on empty but you have responsibilities to others that you cannot say no to? You may be a caregiver in some capacity who is trying to find balance between prioritizing your own needs versus a loved one, patient, or client.
Caregivers often give deeply to family members, clients, patients, or loved ones without a second thought. To care, love, and empathize normally comes automatically. However, this can often result in putting their own needs last and providing care to others while feeling empty. Over time, this can lead to compassion fatigue, burnout, or emotional numbness.
This may look like:
Emotional and physical exhaustion or depletion
Guilt or shame when resting or setting boundaries
Feeling invisible, unsupported, or alone
Loss of joy or motivation - feeling apathetic
Chronic stress, overwhelm, or anxiety
If you are a:
Parent and/or Guardian
Adult children of aging parents
Caregivers of individuals with chronic illness
Partners or Spouses
Siblings
Helping Professional - Therapists, Doctors, Nurses, Teachers, Crisis and Emergency Workers
And experiencing compassion fatigue and burnout, therapy can offer a space where you are held and seen. Whether these patterns of caregiving were learned or are innate, therapy can help restore a feeling of balance where self-care is not perceived as selfish and rest does not become restlessness.
“There are only four kinds of people in the world: those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.”
-Rosalynn Carter
Caring for others should not require sacrificing yourself.
Therapy can support you in:
Exploring and processing specific symptoms of burnout
Replenishing emotional reserves
Reconnecting with your needs
Setting sustainable boundaries
Processing grief and responsibility
Finding steadiness and flexibility without leaning on self-abandonment
Understanding the cycles and symptoms of compassion fatigue, burnout, and vicarious trauma
Akin Approaches to Processing Compassion Fatigue and Burnout as a Caregiver
We aim to create space for your needs and the love and exhaustion you put into your relationship with others so you can start loving and caring for yourself.
-
Together we will explore where patterns such as feeling responsible for other, difficulty asking for help, and disconnection with your needs developed and continue to influence you today.
-
It can feel difficulty to try and identify emotions caregiving for others or even for yourself bring up. EFT provides the space to slow down, make these emotions granular so they feel less overwhelming and make your feel more connected to yourself.
-
DBT will provide some practical tools for getting through some difficult and overwhelming waves. Find support during periods of distress, enhance awareness of personal needs, and learn how to communicate needs and set boundaries when saying “no” is necessary.
-
Compassion is not just something you have to provide to those you care for. It should be extended to yourself. CFT helps us address the self-criticism, shame, and core beliefs and exploring how these parts make offering yourself care difficult while slowly overtime beginning to show yourself care.
Starting relearning how to reconnect with yourself while still caring for others.